Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
Follow this Age of Empires 2 knight rush build order to beat extreme AI or as a basic beginner multiplayer strategy. The AoE2 knight rush is a popular Castle Age strategy that leverages the power of the knight unit to raid the enemy, deny them resources and outrun their main Pikeman counter with some micromanagement. Providing the build order, tips to implement this strategy and recommended knight civilisations for beginner players this page will help you master the knight rush with minimal skill or speed required.
Table of Contents:
– Build Order Summary
– Build Order Detailed
– Best Knight Civilisations
AOE2 Knight Rush Build Order (Summary)
This build order summary is designed for players that are already familiar with the details or want a reference while playing and a guide only that will need to be adjusted for the specific game.
- Build two houses with two villagers while using your other villager and scouting unit to find your starting herdable animals (e.g. sheep)
- Place 6 villagers on her herdable animals
- 4 villagers on wood (and build lumber camp, 12th villager builds a house
- 5 villagers on berries
- Collect your boars with villages previously on herdable animals. After boars and herdables move to farms
- 3 villagers on gold and acquire Loom if required
- Another 6 villagers on wood (subsequent villagers balance food, gold or wood as required)
- Advance to Feudal Age
- Build Barracks while advancing
- After advance build Stable and Blacksmith (Castle Age requirements met)
- Advance to Castle Age
- Build second Stable while advancing
- Create 4-6 knights, obtain available Knight technology and attack
AOE2 Knight Rush Build Order (Step by Step)
This detailed step by step build order of the Knight rush provides the strategy from Dark Age to Castle Age for an initial fighting force of Knights to enter the enemy base to raid it for villagers and block resource gathering. It also includee basic guidance on hotkeys and other tips to help improve your speed and consistency. These steps should be followed in order with minor adjustments based on the map, enemy activity and ability to locate resources. Remember that during this process you should always be producing villagers and your town centre should not sit idle.
- At the start of the game immediately select your town centre (H) and queue up villagers (Q), hotkey use is recommended for this step given this is an easy to remember hotkey process and starts you producing villagers as soon as possible.
- Select two villagers to build an initial two houses, if done fast enough this ensures you can continue to build villagers without a pause from reaching population cap. Using hotkeys is recommended for this step (full stop or mouse to select villagers then A > Q to build a house). If playing Huns you can skip this step and other housing related steps.
- Send the remaining villager to your town centre to prepare for herdable animal collection (e.g. sheep) which you can claim with your Scout unit and send them to the town centre. Herdable units should then be set as the rally point for new villagers to automatically send them to food production and save time on future villager creation.
- Send the Scout to explore in a circular pattern around your base to identify nearby resources (wood, berries, gold, other herdable animals and boars are your priority). Note that advanced players will use their herdable animals to scout smaller areas during this time rather than sending them straight to the town centre but this is not required to beat Extreme AI.
- Continue to create villagers to farm herdable animals until you have a minimum of 6 villagers which is enough to sustain villager creation. 7 villagers is a safer but slightly slower option that can be a good choice to begin with when practicing as it provides enough food to be able to queue up several villagers to prevent potential idle town centre time and can also make obtaining your boar or equivalent easier, particularly without researching Loom.
- When you have 6 or 7 on sheep proceed to build a lumber camp and assign the next 4 villagers to gather wood for future houses and buildings. Your 12th villager should build a house to prevent you from being population capped and for efficiency you can build this next to the lumber camp or you can use it to provide a wall between you and your enemies location. From here onwards always build a new house when you are at most 3 under your max population and you can build multiple houses at once to simplify the build order.
- You should now be able to build a mill next to your berries for another food source and fill the gaps in time while hunting boars. This can be either the the same villager that built the house or the next villager that comes from your town centre depending on map layout and your villager positions.
- Send the next 5 villagers to berries, similar to herdable you can send slightly more (6 or 7) to allow you to queue more villagers to make the build order easier but does lose some efficiency.
- Villagers created after this point should be placed on acquiring wood for the time being to build your wood stockpiles for additional farms, houses, mining camp and Feudal Age buildings. This is a good default option as wood has many uses and you can grab villagers from wood as necessary for other tasks as needed.
- When your villagers finish acquiring all the herdable units from your town centre move them to farming the two boars or equivalents by dragging and killing it under your town centre. This boosts resource acquisition and is also safer from any early raids given the protection it provides. Note that if your boars are far away then Loom can help reduce any damage your villagers take and may be required depending on map layout. Advanced build orders will prioritise boars earlier for the large food they provide and to protect them against advanced players, this is not necessary for this basic Knight Rush build order but is a tactic you should work towards for PvP gameplay.
- When your villagers finish acquiring the boars or equivalents move them to farm creation around your town centre. Any hurt villagers from the boars should have farms closest to your town centre and ideally away from your enemy base to give them as much protection as possible.
- When your villagers finish acquiring berries move them to farms that you have enough wood for to create with any leftover being sent to build a mining camp and acquire gold or to harvest wood.
- Have at least 3 villagers acquiring gold (4 or 5 if you want to research Loom due to fear of enemy raids or already have researched it for boars).
- Advance to the Feudal Age when you have the 500 food necessary, a good goal is to aim for somewhere between 24-26 villagers. This is a balance between not advancing with too few villagers that you cannot acquire sufficient resources and obtaining Feudal Age in a good time to stay on track to the fast Castle Age required.
- Build your Barracks just before or while upgrading to the Feudal Age, this can serve as a good wall building for enemies (particularly AI). This is also a good point to assess the balance of your villagers as food and gold need to be the priority to advance further and build a healthy force of Knights with upgrades. Wood cannot be ignored though as you have some expensive buildings to construct soon and wood is required to keep your farms generating food.
- After you advance to Feudal Age proceed to build a Stable and a Blacksmith, these will serve as the necessary buildings required to advance to the Castle Age. You will want a second Stable when appropriate and before you starting creating Knight units but prioritise a Blacksmith over a second stable first to ensure you meet the advancement requirements.
- Your goal after advancing to Feudal is advance to Castle Age as soon as you have the necessary resources and buildings and not research any technology in between. Create one villager at a time until you have the 800 food necessary and click advance to Castle Age.
- Once in Castle Age build up your Knights to at least 4 and go attack your enemy focusing on their resources of wood and gold as these are often open to attack and hurt progression. If your raiding is going well you can start layering Knight specific upgrades to push your advantage along with some economic technologies based on your civilisation technology tree.
Best Knight Civilisations in Age of Empires 2
In order to be successful in a Knight Rush players will want to use the best Age of Empires 2 civilisation for the task as some have civilisation bonuses that improve the ease or effectiveness of this strategy. While all civilisations that have the Knight available are capable of performing a Knight Rush some are significantly better due to either their Knight specific bonuses, general cavalry bonuses or early economic bonuses that help propel you into Castle Age. There are also some civilisations that are better able to recover from a failed Knight Rush or transition into the late game stages as well if you fail and need to alter your strategy.
I recommended trying several of the civilisations below from Franks, Huns, Persians, Berbers or Teutons to find the one that best suits your playstyle and strengths with this list presented in approximate power level.
Franks
The Franks are a popular powerful civilisation for a Knight focused strategy due to their bonuses to economic progression and the Knight unit although this does mean experienced players will be aware of your intended strategy in multiplayer.
This makes the Franks one of my recommended options as a cavalry civilisation and particularly against the AI where the bonuses of this civilisation are highly effective. This includes the benefit of additional line of sight on your Knights to scout enemy bases easily, the additional Knight durability and economic boosts to farming and foraging.
Huns
If you want to simplify your build orders in any Age of Empires 2 strategy the Huns are the perfect civilisation as they don’t have to build houses. This makes them forgiving compared to other civilisation and the benefit of saving you of wood which speeds up your ability to reach Castle Age similar to other economic bonuses that civilisations have.
Combined with a team bonus to stable production speed you can produce Knights quickly and acquire their upgrades from the stable at a faster rate.
Persians
Offering a solid civilisation the Persians have town centres with extra health and work faster that propels your progress throughout the game. As if that wasn’t enough they have a food and wood starting bonus that can make any build order easier to complete as a small mistake won’t throw of your progression entirely as it might when playing another civilisation. Persian Knights specifically also benefit from the team bonus that gives extra attack against Archers which can help you counter an early Archer strategy from your opponent when the need arises.
The Persian economic powerhouse is absolutely a civilisation you should consider although keep in mind their technology tree is cavalry heavy with their unique unit also being a cavalry unit so it can feel like an all in strategy at times. The Persian civilisation does have decent archer options as a backup and your town centre bonus can generally fund this switch of strategy if required.
Berbers
Another strong civilisation for a Knight Rush build order strategy the Berbers offer players economic benefits which can reduce how punishing mistakes can be. This comes from faster moving villagers that can offset idle time or poor pathing decisions while also helping you avoid early raids by moving them towards the safety of your town centre.
Berber stable units also receive a discount to acquire an extra Knight during your initial raids that might just be the difference you need for success. Given their navy focus though they miss out on some key land technology such as Halberdier, Arbalester and Paladin that make the game after the Knight rush difficult unless there is also water on the map.
Teutons
The Teutons are a capable Knight Rush civilisation that can transition to their infantry and defensive strength for additional safety options. The core knight and other stable units are strong with extra armour from the Castle Age to help your raiding while also having the team bonus conversion resistance which can counter a common Knight counter. As Persians lack the Husbandry technology though their units are slower to balance this durability.
The Teutons also have cheap farms to acquire food and limit early game wood demands that reduce the pressure on delivering perfect economic macro gameplay.
